Congress
House passes three-bill spending package with weeks left to avoid a shutdown
The House passed three government spending bills Thursday, inching Congress closer to funding federal operations ahead of the Jan. 30 deadline to avoid a shutdown.
The measures would fund the departments of Energy, Commerce, Interior and Justice, as well as water programs, the EPA and federal science initiatives through the end of the current fiscal year. The bipartisan vote comes as a relief to Speaker Mike Johnson, who had to mount a real-time whip operation on the floor Wednesday when conservatives threatened to tank the procedural rule paving the way for consideration of the funding legislation that was originally intended to be brought up in a single package.
A dozen GOP fiscal hawks were prepared to vote “no” on the rule unless leadership agreed to remove certain earmarks from the underlying package — and promised to revamp the earmarks process surrounding future spending bills.
To quell the rebellion, a plan was hatched to split up the package and accommodate two separate votes: one on the Commerce-Justice-Science bill, where discontent over certain earmarks couldn’t be resolved, and another on the Interior-Environment and Energy-Water bills coupled together. This maneuver allowed hard-liners to register their opposition to the Commerce-Justice-Science measure but still support the others.
The House ultimately voted 375-47 on Commerce-Justice-Science, with three dozen Republicans opposing, as compared to the just three Republicans who opposed the Interior-EPA and Energy-Water measures on a 419-6 vote.
Members of both parties also agreed to nix one particularly controversial, $1 million earmark sought by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for a program in her district.
A third vote Thursday, 397-28, was on final passage and to approve sending the three measures over to the Senate reconstituted into a package. Majority Leader John Thune is eying consideration of this bundle as soon as next week.
“Going forward, we’re going to be allowed a little more access to the bills and the ability to have an impact on them in the future — this next tranche,” Rep. Andy Harris, a senior appropriator and House Freedom Caucus chair, told reporters.
But House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) defended the bills against the lamentations of conservatives.
“These bills are the product of bipartisan, bicameral consensus and are grounded in a member-driven process,” Cole said in a floor speech Thursday. “It wasn’t meant to be easy. In fact, difficulty is what separates serious legislating from political convenience.”
Appropriators are already working on the next spending package they hope to move in advance of the month-end funding cliff. Legislative text could come this weekend, Cole told reporters Wednesday ahead of a meeting of chairs for the Homeland Security, State-Foreign Operations and Financial Services appropriations subcommittees.
“All the reports I’m getting are very good,” he added in a Wednesday interview. “We’re getting good cooperation from our Democratic friends as well. I mean, people are serious about trying to get this stuff done.”
But Cole and his colleagues have their work cut out for them in passing the rest of the full-year funding bills for fiscal 2026. There are six measures Congress has not yet advanced, and they include some of the diciest of the bunch — among them, Defense and Labor-HHS-Education, which make up nearly 70 percent of all federal discretionary spending.
And the DHS portion of the next funding package has likely gotten even more unwieldy following this week’s shooting of a U.S. citizen in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.
The House Republican in charge of that account, Rep. Mark Amodei of Nevada, acknowledged the events in Minnesota “will probably complicate the bill.”
The appropriations package advanced Thursday largely rejected the dramatic cuts requested by the White House, instead making more tailored spending reductions to energy and environment programs and those popular with Democrats.
The EPA would see a 4 percent, or $320 million, cut, instead of the more than $4 billion reduction President Donald Trump had sought. The National Park Service would face a moderate reduction from current funding levels, much less than the 37 percent cut the White House asked for.
One area set to get a boost are trade agencies, including an 18 percent increase for the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office and a 23 percent increase for the Commerce Department office responsible for designing and enforcing export controls used to target China and other countries.
Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.
House Speaker Mike Johsnon said he plans to send President Donald Trump a bipartisan housing bill Monday, just days after the president abruptly canceled a signing ceremony for the legislation after Congress failed to pass his elections security act.
Speaking with Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” Johnson said the 21st Century ROAD To Housing Act is a Republican priority for lowering costs for Americans.
“I’m going to send the bill over to him on Monday, and it will become law,” the Louisiana Republican told host Maria Bartiromo. “I certainly want him to take the biggest, boldest marker that he has and do that big Trump signature proudly on that legislation because we’re delivering for the people, and that’s what he wants to do.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Johnson’s remarks.
The bill is the product of almost a year of back-and-forth between all four congressional corners and aims to increase affordability by boosting housing supply and home ownership. It passed both chambers of Congress with wide bipartisan support.
Trump was scheduled to sign the bill into law last week but canceled the ceremony “until such time as we pass the desperately needed SAVE AMERICA ACT, which I consider to be a National Emergency.”
Trump’s SAVE America Act would require voters to present a photo ID at the ballot box and effectively end mail-in voting. Trump has also said he would like the bill to include prohibitions on transgender athletes competing. But Republican leaders have repeatedly indicated the legislation does not have enough votes to pass.
Congressional leaders appeared taken aback by Trump’s signing cancellation, but Johnson on Sunday said he and the president have since met in the Oval Office to discuss the housing bill “in great detail.”
“We made a lot of promises to the voters, and we’re fulfilling those every single day of this Congress,” Johnson said. “This is a big part of that because this will increase the availability, the access to more housing, bring down cost, cut regulations, do the things we know are very important for that market. The president and I talked about that at length. Of course he wants to do those things.”
But if Trump does not sign the housing bill into law within the next few days, it would still become law unless he were to veto it. Congress also has the power to override a presidential veto.
Sen. Thom Tillis on Sunday expressed frustration with President Donald Trump’s continued fixation on passing the SAVE America Act.
In an interview with BLN’s “Face the Nation,” the retiring North Carolina Republican lamented “the impossible task” of implementing the requirements of the legislation ahead of November’s crucial midterms.
“Why are we doing more things to undermine our confidence in elections, rather than getting the strong message out that will win for Republicans this year?” Tillis said.
Rather than promoting the bill — which would require voters to present a photo ID at the ballot box and effectively end widespread mail-in voting — Tillis said Republicans should tell voters about “the rise of the Democratic Socialists of America” while accepting the current voting laws.
“Win by the good results that Republicans have produced and stop undermining the confidence in the elections,” said Tillis. “This is a bedrock of our 250-year history of success as the democracy that changed the world. Let’s not mess with that between now and November.”
Trump has said the SAVE America Act is his “No. 1 priority” ahead of midterms, going so far as to abruptly cancel a bill signing for major bipartisan legislation on housing affordability until Congress passes his elections bill. But many Democrats are staunchly against the bill, arguing it could disenfranchise millions of voters, and Republican leaders in Congress have repeatedly indicated it does not have the votes to pass.
Tillis co-sponsored the original SAVE America Act but has objected to Trump’s version of the legislation, which would also bar transgender athletes from women’s sports.
It’s not the first time Tillis has clashed with Trump.
Earlier this year, Tillis blocked Trump’s Fed chair nominee, Kevin Warsh, until the Justice Department dropped an investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. He has also spoken out against the Justice Department’s $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” calling it a “payout for punks.” And he has emerged as a fierce critic of Bill Pulte, Trump’s interim director of national intelligence.
“Let’s try and figure out a way to completely and finally end these distractions so that we can focus on the damage Democrats could do if they take the House, if they beat incumbent Republicans in the Senate. That’s what Republicans need to be talking about between now and November,” Tillis said Sunday.
Sen. Bill Cassidy appeared to question President Donald Trump’s view of Congress, saying in an interview that he is not sure Trump grasps that Congress “is a separate body, separate from the presidency.”
“Sometimes he acts as if Congress is merely an appendage, and, frankly, sometimes Congress acts like it’s an appendage,” the Louisiana Republican said in a pre-taped interview with CBS’ “Face the Nation” that aired Sunday.
The latest criticism in a public clash between the two leaders, Cassidy also told host Margaret Brennan that he would be focused on affordability, including the cost of health care and groceries, if he were president.
“If I were president, I would be focused on those people that they have, my people, our people, us at the kitchen table. How do you make their life better? And that’s what I think the president should be focused on,” Cassidy said.
The relationship between Cassidy and Trump has been rocky for some time. Cassidy was one of only a handful of Republican leaders who voted to convict Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Trump and Cassidy recently clashed in a closed-door meeting between GOP leaders, with Cassidy admitting he raised his voice to “match” the president’s.
“The president said something negative about me. I received it as attempting to bully me from asking a question that I think the American people need to know, and I’m not going to be bullied,” Cassidy said at the time.
However, after receiving a special briefing from Vice President JD Vance and special envoy Steve Witkoff, Cassidy changed his vote on a resolution designed to rein in Trump’s power to wage war against Iran.
“They said right now the negotiations are delicate, and they could collapse if they’re not nursed along in the appropriate way. I can accept that,” Cassidy said.
“That’s the reason they said for their kind of lack of being forthcoming. I can accept that, but my goal was to be briefed, to have the truth in order to make a decision for the benefit of my country, and that was satisfied.”
Still, Cassidy’s stance against Trump has cost him: After serving more than a decade in the Senate, Cassidy lost his campaign for renomination after Trump endorsed against him. Rep. Julia Letlow will be the Louisiana Republican Senate candidate this fall.
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